At the Landowners' Convention in Dublin yesterday week an interesting
discussion took place on the subject of land purchase and the intention of the Government to introduce anew measure dealing with that subject. Lord Clonbrock, who presided, deplored the fact that Mr. Birrell had been unable to convert his colleagues in the Cabinet to his own view, viz., that land purchase was a more important matter than Home Rule. Lord Oranmore and Browne, who pro- posed a resolution welcoming the prospect of legislation to remove the present deplorable deadlock, observed that land- lords were willing to sell and tenants to buy, but land purchase had diminished to an extraordinaryextent in the last three years because England now only allowed sales to be effected on terms unsatisfactory to both vendors and purchasers. Lord Mayo, in seconding the resolution, said that where tenants had purchased their holdings there was peace and an absence of agrarian out- rage. He would not, however, regard Mr. Asquith's statement as equivalent to a promise, and warned the landlords that they would have to rely on their own party and no one else. The O'Conor Don illustrated the paralysing effect of the Act of 1909 on sales, from the returns of the Land Commission. For the three years before the passing of that Act a total of forty millions of money was applied for. From 1909 to 1912 the amount applied for was a little under ten millions, and some- thing like four millions of that really represented applications lodged under the Act of 1903.
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